Insights and perspectives on the forecast of evapotranspiration product, why it is important for agriculture and urban landscapes, and how it works, in the last CMCC webinar held by Richard Snyder, researcher at the University of California-Davis, USA. Watch the video and download the webinar presentation!

Climate change projections indicate that precipitation depths are likely to decrease in regions where agriculture needs irrigation, which will further exacerbate existing problems with limited water resources.

Knowing evapotranspiration (ET) rates of agricultural crops is especially important in these semi-arid and arid climates where supplemental or full irrigation is often needed to produce a crop. Forty years ago, there was limited availability of ET information to help growers determine water requirements and there was little interest by growers, who mainly used surface irrigation methods, to access available information. Because water resources have decreased relative to the water demand due to climate and agricultural and urban expansion, there is a clear change from surface irrigation to micro-sprinkler and drip irrigation systems. With low-volume irrigation systems, a big problem is that farmers need forecast estimates of ET to order the needed water and plan for the timing and amount of water to apply during the next week.

This led to development of a forecast ET product (FRET) by the USA National Weather Service Sacramento Office and the University of California at Davis.
On July 23, 2019, researcher Richard Snyder (University of California-Davis, USA) hold a webinar on the forecast ET (FRET) product, why it is important for agriculture and urban landscapes, and how it works. The speaker has been introduced by Prof. Donatella Spano, University of Sassari and Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change (CMCC).

The forecast service has expanded to include the entire USA (excluding Alaska and Hawaii). It is now possible to obtain a seven-day forecast of evapotranspiration for short canopies (ETo) at any location. Growers are now starting to use FRET to improve application efficiency, reduce water applications, and save energy.

Watch the video:

Download the webinar presentations (pdf):

• The introduction by Donatella Spano (University of Sassari and Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change – CMCC).
• The presentation by Richard Snyder (University of California-Davis, USA).

More information here.